


Changing

by silentdescant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dubious Morality, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Lies, M/M, Manipulation, Metamorphmagus, Post - Order of the Phoenix, Pre-Hogwarts, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:12:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentdescant/pseuds/silentdescant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonks has grown up watching Remus. She knows what he likes. And since she likes Remus, Tonks decides to be what he likes as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changing

Tonks knows what Remus Lupin likes. She’s been watching him for as long as she’s known him, which is most of her life. When she was a child, Remus came around with Sirius for visits, or she and her mother visited them at their shared flat in London. She still saw him occasionally on her summer holidays during her Hogwarts years, even after the whole mess with Sirius being carted off to Azkaban.

She wishes that Sirius had had a trial, back then, because with the whole world believing he betrayed the Potters and Remus and that he killed the rat and a bunch of muggles in cold blood—well, Tonks saw first-hand how it destroyed Remus. Her mother made him tea and cakes, on his visits, and she learned what Remus is comforted by (as much as he was comforted by anything during that time of his life).

After becoming a fully qualified Auror and productive member of the Order of the Phoenix, Tonks began to see quite a lot of Remus at Order meetings. Sirius as well, by this point, which was great fun because she missed her cousin dearly, even when she’d thought he was evil.

She learns very quickly that Remus and Sirius are just the same as they always were. Grown-up, yes, and more somber sometimes, sure, but almost as reckless and just as intelligent. There were little things, familiar things, that Tonks notices as well, and these things are all exactly the same as she remembers from childhood.

For instance, she remembers quite clearly that Remus would lay his hand gently on Sirius’s shoulder or arm during a heated discussion with someone and Sirius would diffuse instantly and focus on logic rather than emotion. He does that now, at Order meetings, especially when Severus is around, because Severus always goads Sirius and tries to provoke a fight, and Sirius nearly always rises to the bait. Without Remus around to calm things down, Tonks imagines they would all have a lot more practice at mending broken noses and black eyes.

A few times at Grimmauld place, while several of them are sitting ‘round the table pouring over maps or blueprints, Tonks sees Sirius—who is almost always fluttering around the fringes of the room, pacing, adding his thoughts from afar—produce the exact book or note paper or parchment and quill that Remus needs at any given moment. It’s a little amusing to watch, now that Tonks is aware of it. Remus begins shifting papers aside, looking for whatever it is, and Sirius will retrieve it from the other side of the table and place it gently in front of Remus. All of this happens without either of them naming the object or asking for assistance, and Remus always smiles after, though never in Sirius’s direction.

Tonks vaguely remembers Sirius doing similar things when she visited their old flat, long ago, providing Remus with tea or a napkin or a misplaced knife during meals. Remus did smile at Sirius back then, she thinks, but they hide more of themselves now, especially among the Order.

After Sirius falls through the veil, it’s worse than it ever was when Sirius was in Azkaban. Tonks begins spending all of her spare time with Remus, at whatever safehouse he happens to be living in, and tries to recreate the comforting tea and sympathetic talks her mother used to give him. Before, Remus was very candid about his feelings of betrayal and loss. He missed Sirius and still loved him. “I can’t help it,” she remembers hearing during one rainy afternoon’s visit. “I know it’s wrong, but I’ve spent so much of my life loving him, I don’t know how to stop.”

Now, even though Tonks has made it clear that she understands what Sirius meant to him, Remus barely admits to the aching, soul-destroying loss he must be feeling. She can read it in his face, in the weary eyes and permanently down-turned lips, and in the state of his unkempt hair and unshaven chin. He won’t talk to her. He won’t talk to anyone. But he does accept Tonks’s comforting gestures.

Tonks feels now that her life has been devoted to watching Remus, studying him, learning him. She knows what he likes, what he appreciates. She understands how he thinks about problems and how he reacts to pain of both the physical and emotional sort. There’s not a lot she can do for him, but… she does know what he likes, and she likes Remus quite a lot and wants desperately to help him, and so she tries.

She begins by growing several inches taller. Never all at once, but gradually. She stretches her body so that she’s closer to Remus in height, and his head doesn’t tilt down quite so much when he looks at her.

Next, she straightens her nose. It’s another subtle change, and Tonks takes it slowly. She’s very deliberate about her morphs now, between going undercover and trying to comfort Remus. Her natural nose is upturned and very pointy at the tip, and over time, she changes this to a straight, more rounded nose. She also widens her mouth, just slightly, and thins her lips just a little bit, and when she looks in the mirror now, she looks like many of her Black ancestors.

Somewhere along the way, Tonks's intentions had shifted. The changes become less about giving Remus something comforting and more about her need to please him and make him appreciate her as he used to appreciate Sirius. The changes become something of an obsession, one she keeps very secret.

Her hair is purple and her eyes are blue, but the rest of her face has the attractive features of her many cousins, and she’s been changing her regular appearance so gradually that nobody has commented on it. She’s quite proud of herself. She and Remus are talking, sitting by a window at the Burrow and having tea. Molly made it, and the biscuits, but Tonks will happily seize credit for the comforting gesture.

The conversation somehow meanders around to Tonks’s appearance. Remus is studying her face as if he’s just noticed how she looks. She waits for the accusation, but it doesn’t come.

“What color are your eyes?” he asks instead. “Your natural color, I mean.”

They’re boring brown, but that’s not the answer Tonks gives. “Grey,” she replies, and with a blink, they change. The light, bright blue she favors these days becomes dark grey. It’s a color she knows well; she’s learned it from photographs, practiced copying it in the mirror, for weeks now, but it’s too noticeable a change to try and slip by Remus without him knowing.

His voice goes very quiet and breathy, which makes it hard to interpret his emotions. “Really?” he asks. Tonks thinks she hears a faint note of hope, or perhaps incredulity.

“It’s a family trait,” she lies. Sirius had been the only Black in recent generations to have grey eyes. The rest of them are dark, chocolaty brown (like Tonks’s mother) or vibrant blue (like her aunts Narcissa and Bellatrix). She thinks Regulus had brown eyes as well, but her memories of Sirius’s brother are very faint and possibly not real at all. She was still very young when he’d died.

“I imagine you don’t like it, then,” Remus says. The corners of his lips twitch upward. Not quite a smile, but definitely amusement.

“I don’t mind it,” she replies. “Blue and green are flashier, so I like them, but grey’s not bad.”

“You look very lovely,” he murmurs. He’s staring down at his tea, but his eyes—brown, but much lighter than Tonks’s real natural color—flick up to her face quickly. He becomes quite tense. “I hope that’s not inappropriate of me to say. I meant the color is lovely on you.”

“Thank you.”

Tonks begins pacing at Order meetings. She finds it does actually help her think, which must have been why Sirius did it all the time. That, or he was just so full of restless energy, being cooped up in Grimmauld Place all the time. Unfortunately, Tonks does not have the same strange connection to Remus that Sirius had, so she cannot always read his mind and provide him with whatever he’s looking for, but she tries. Sometimes, she even gets it right, and she catches Remus’s smiles out of the corner of her eye—grey now, almost always.

She times the biggest, most noticeable change very carefully: she goes undercover with Mad-Eye as an old witch with a similar pinched expression to Minerva McGonagall. Her hair is even done up in a severe bun, which makes her look much older. When she returns to the safehouse to give her report, Remus is there, and Tonks adopts her new, Sirius-like face. She doesn’t change her hair. Instead, she just reaches up to let it free of the bun and it tumbles down in soft, dark waves around her shoulders.

Remus can’t take his eyes off her during the whole meeting.

A warm flutter expands from Tonks’s belly to fill her entire body. Thankfully Mad-Eye is taking the lead on their mission report, because she can’t concentrate at all.

Remus catches her by the arm before she leaves and drags her over to a quiet corner. His eyes are very sharp, and Tonks wonders if he’s finally caught on, or if he’s found out she’s lying.

“Your hair,” he begins. “May I ask…”

It used to be a game with the children at Grimmauld place for the summer: they would ask her to do impressions, of course, but they would also try to guess at what she really looked like. She never told any of them that her hair was another boring, drab brown, and that’s why she likes such vibrant colors instead. She's glad now that she'd kept them all wondering.

Tonks forces a laugh. “What do you think?” she asks, recalling the portraits on the Black family tapestry. All of them, save one or two, have black hair.

“This is what you look like?” Remus asks quietly. He holds himself very stiffly, and his hand, which is still on her arm, goes suddenly tight, fingers digging painfully into her flesh.

With an abrupt burst of clarity, Tonks realizes her mistake. “I’m sorry, I’ll change,” she says quickly. “I didn’t realize—I look like my aunt, don’t I?”

Remus, however, looks confused. After a few seconds, during which Tonks changes her hair to a vibrant pink and her eyes to bright, summery green, he says, “You mean Bellatrix Lestrange? That’s not… I didn’t think that, Tonks. You can go back to normal if you want. I’d actually…”

“Actually what?”

“I’d like you to be yourself around me,” he says carefully. “If you don’t mind, of course.”

He acts like he’s made the connection; his fingers are gentle once more, and he’s staring somewhat wistfully at her face. She brings back Sirius’s grey eyes and black hair.

“You look…” he says. “You look very lovely, Tonks. You don’t have to hide.”

Remus lets her go and, unable to think of a plausible excuse to stay, she goes with Mad-Eye back to the Ministry. As she sits at her desk, tapping a quill against her chin, she wonders if Remus really has made the connection. Perhaps he just thinks she looks lovely. It surprises her, even though that was her goal, because in her mind, in front of her mirror at home with the photo of Sirius spell-o-taped to the wall beside it, she looks so much like him that she can’t imagine Remus being unable to consciously see the resemblance.

Tonks turns these thoughts over and over, getting no official work done, until it’s time to leave, and she still doesn’t reach a conclusion. Either Remus knows what she’s been doing and he wants her to look like Sirius but won’t talk to her about it, or Remus doesn’t know and he just thinks she looks lovely and wants her to be unashamed of her family traits. Both options are equally likely and both, thankfully, have the same end result: Remus likes her new appearance, and he will soon come to like _her_.

 

 _fin_.


End file.
